The Game of Desire
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: What if the characters from Westeros were courtesans in the Night Court of Terre D'Ange? Cersei - Mandrake, Jaime - Valerian, Arianne - Jasmine, Margaery - Orchis, Daenerys - Dahlia, Petyr - Bryony, Sansa - Balm, Lysa - Cereus, Bran - Gentian.
1. Mandrake and Valerian

**Mandrake** - _Yield all_  
><strong>Valerian<strong> -_ I yield_

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><p><em>One pair was from <em>Valerian House, kneeling <em>_abeyante__ with lowered heads. One pair was from_ Mandrake House, faces hidden behind domino masks._

**- Kushiel's Justice**

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><p>He has known her flechettes to part his skin like silk and the brush of a lash to burn like a kiss and leave him aching for more. But this, surely this, must be the choicest and most consummate of her tortures. The ones she devises only for him.<p>

Cersei makes him watch.

Not bound to the wheel nor chained at her feet, either. "You will watch because I bid you to," she had said, trailing her pointed, scarlet nails along his shoulders, "and surely my pleasure should be above your own?" Viciously, she twists his wrist. "_Cripple_," she hisses. She has never forgiven him for losing his other arm, for marring his beauty and becoming less like her. His stump revolts her, she is not shy to remind him.

And before he could reply, she had begun to move her hips, her scented golden hair falling over his face and he found he could not speak at all.

The boy she has brought has scarcely come of age, some nineteen years out of swaddling and with a belly full of young cock-of-the-walk desires. A tuft of dark hair falls into his laughing black eyes. A well-made lad, he has to admit, with a face made for smiling. He smiles very widely when he sees Jaime lounging on the couch. Jaime wishes for nothing so much as a sword, even a hammer will do, to smash those pretty white teeth and carve the boy a red smile.

"Brother," Cersei says, smiling creamily. The damn bitch has the temerity to dimple at him. "Will you not greet our guest? This is Theon, a scion of House Greyjoy."

He raises a hand in languorous indifference to the stripling. His good one.

Cersei clucks, determined to leech him to the very last drop. "That was ill done, Jaime. Lord Theon will think we have no manners at all."

Slowly he rises and sweeps the boy a bow so elaborate as to be farcical. "Be welcome to my sister's cunt, Lord Theon Greyjoy," he says, gritting out every word. "Tight as silk and sweet as honey." Cersei opens her mouth, no doubt to bid him kneel to greet their guest, lick his boots to a shine perhaps. "Don't push me, sweet sister," he says quietly. "Lest I call upon my own _signale_."

He has never used the _signale_ with her before. Never, even though the marks of her love have been seared into his body. Somehow they both know that when he finally does, nothing will ever be the same between them again.

The boy raises his brows at Cersei. "Will he be here throughout?"

"He will," Cersei murmurs.

Now the boy looks uncertain. He had not thought past the savor of bedding the Golden Lady of House Mandrake, not as a supplicant as but as a master. Of flaunting it in her brother and lover's face and bragging to his young companions of how the lion sat in silence and let him maul his mate. Cersei _no_ Mandrake cared naught that to his lord father, he was but a pale ghost of the sons he had lost. Cersei _no_ Mandrake had chosen _him_ above all others.

She cups his cheek. "Nothing is free in life, sweet. You ought to have looked more closely into our contract."

"I-I did but I thought you were not serious about _this_."

"I never jest," she says dryly. "Not where business is concerned. Or," she says, with a nod to Jaime, "desire."

"I thought that you would submit yourself to me!"

"I will. It is not my wont," she says. "I prefer to... shall we say, dominate? I am of Mandrake House, just as my sweet brother is of Valerian. We are well mated in our desires. I make an exception tonight, though." Her green eyes flash and she puts him in his place neatly. "For my brother's sake, not yours."

The boy scowls and tries to stand up straighter, to look more the man and less the trivial worm he really is, caught and crushed between two overpowering desires. "Your _signale _is Joffrey, Madame."

"My son's name," she says. A fatherless son. She has never revealed his parentage to the world, to do so would bring shame and damnation to them all, even in Terre D'Ange where love is the only canon.

"I am well aware of that and of the other stipulations of our contract." He grows hotter and more flushed with embarrassment by the moment, her cool composure discomfiting him even further. This is a boy touchy of his honor, one who does not like to be played for a fool. "Shall we begin?"

"I thought you would never ask." She inclines her head gravely and Jaime grits his teeth as she slides her arms out of her loose green silk robe. She unknots the darker green sash and it slithers down the length of her body. In the candlelight she is incandescently beautiful and every fiber of his being is screaming at him to take her away, to cut Theon Greyjoy's lecherous eyes out of his face for daring to look at her so, to lay her on the couch and use her until she cannot help but scream for release and mercy, until her whole world is only him...

But he makes himself watch, because Cersei has bidden him to. His sister knows her game too well.

"Use me as you will, my lord," she murmurs, shaking out her golden mane. "Let us begin."

Theon Greyjoy needs no second bidding. With a laugh, he slaps her face so hard her head snaps back and then grabs her by the hair forcing his tongue into her mouth. Yet even as he uses Cersei, even as Jaime's hands ball into fists and his nails leave welts in his palms, she manages to turn her head the tiniest angle and wink at him. And even as she lets her pliant body yield, she lets him know exactly who is in charge.


	2. Jasmine and Orchis

**Jasmine** - _For pleasure's sake_  
><strong>Orchis<strong> - _Joy in Laughter_

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><p><em>Jasmine... ah, there's adepts at Jasmine will leave you limp as a dishrag, half-drowned in the sweat of desire.<em>

**- Kushiel's Scion  
><strong>

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><p><em>He may have been her gift, but Mirette no Orchis possessed the secret of bestowing joy in the act of worshiping Naamah. That is the canon of Orchis House, and that secret she shared with Alcuin.<em>

**- Kushiel's Dart**

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><p>Jasmine House is a twilit world, of blue-plumed incense smoking in bronze censers and colored silks that cut off the light. Of leaden looks, heavy with knowing, of lovers' sighs. Born and bred to it, it is almost everything Arianne needs. Almost. Betimes she takes herself to Orchis House, where laughter chases the shadows away and where Margaery <em>no<em> Orchis, spinning her toils, waits for her.

Her chin pillowed on her arms, Arianne watches her oldest friend toy with the stem of a gold rose, a patron-gift of rare workmanship. Beneath a pale green gown, molded to her figure, the younger girl is naked. The fabric is more water than silk, Arianne reflects, enjoying the view. It cups Margaery's small, high-set breasts and rounded buttocks. Behind a cornice of embroidered gold leaves, a pale nipple peeks out.

"Ohhh... visitors," Margaery says, propping herself on the window-seat. Arianne turns lazily, watching a pair of young lordlings dismount in the courtyard. She knows them of course, the uncle and nephew cast to the same mold, both red-haired and blue-eyed. "I will have the young one and you shall have the old."

She makes a moue of playful disappointment. "I know Edmure Tully," she sighs, clasping her armlets above and below her elbows. They are carved like snakes, their scales interleaving gold and ivory. No patron-gifts these but treasures brought from Bhodistan, a reminder of her heritage. Arianne watches Margaery take the measure of them, not even bothering to conceal how much she covets them. But then Margaery's grandmother was an adept of Bryony - little of value escapes her notice."We call him the Floppy Fish at House Jasmine."

"Why?" Margaery laughs, diverted. "_Oh_..." She reflects a moment. "The wolf-cub is sixteen and boys at that age are not apt to disappoint. Such a blushing beauty - oh but there is nothing more ticklish than innocence, is there, Arianne?"

If she had been anyone else, anyone but Olenna _no_ Bryony's granddaughter, Arianne would have thought the words spoken in all innocence. _Arys. _The memory of her white swan is like vinegar in an open wound. As Margaery had doubtless intended.

_How can you call her friend? _Nym was wont to ask. _She has the face of a flower and the heart of a snake. No, forgive me. That bitch has no heart. _And Arianne had no answer for her cousin save the true one, the foolish one - that Margaery made her laugh. _Aye, _Nym had agreed with a sharp smile, _that's what she's been trained to do. To laugh you into your ruin. _

Arianne bends to lace her gilt sandles. They reach to her thighs and it is slow going with her trembling fingers. "Innocence is a precious gift," she murmurs, "to be treasured, not made mock of, Margaery. Be gentle with young Stark."

"He's a pretty thing," Margaery agrees, kneeling before Arianne to help her. She touches her knee in reassurance and then her fingers travel upwards, massaging her inner thighs. "It will be no hardship to be gentle with him." They have played this game before, Arianne thinks, jerking away from Margaery. And it has never gone well with her. Margaery, still kneeling at her feet, looks up with a teasing smile.

"We must not keep our visitors waiting," Arianne says breathlessly. In Jasmine House, they are never taught to give the lie to their desires - is it her fault that Margaery's touch makes her breath quicken?

"If you say so," Margaery only says, putting up her arm for Arianne to haul her to her feet.

The foyer is a riot of autumnal color - scarlet and umber leaves and golden flowers. Laughter and the music of harps ring through the marble hall as patrons and adepts chat and cup-bearers circulate with flutes of summerwine. In her flame-colored silks, Arianne feels a part of the display herself, even as Margaery in her gown of cool, springlike tints stands starkly out. Edmure Tully beckons her with a crook of his finger.

"How may I serve, my lord?" she breathes, kneeling _abeyante _at his side.

He curls a tendril of her black hair around his finger. "You must be from Jasmine House."

"My lord is correct."

"I have little use for Jasmine House." He grimaces. "A woman there once played me false."

_Meaning you could not please her and she was fool enough to spread the word. _Of all the houses, the adepts of Jasmine are the least like to hold their tongues or to submit to any desires save their own. "My lord must not judge us all by a single woman. Perhaps I might change your mind?" She bats her eyelashes at him and he relents with a young man's good nature.

"Just this once then, sweetling," he says, tumbling her on to his lap and nestling his face in the crook of her neck. "Cinnamon and cloves... Blessed Elua, you smell like a spice market. Exotic." _Margaery will smell of roses, _Arianne thinks. From as long as she can remember she has always done so. As she curls her hands through Edmure's thick auburn hair, she longs to bury her lips in Margaery's, to sate herself with her scent and taste.

From the corner of her eye she watches Margaery perched on the armrest of Robb Stark's chair. In the middle of a most animated story, she begins to wave her hands about to illustrate her point but Robb has eyes only for his uncle. He squirms uneasily as though the sight of them discomfit him in some way and Margaery breaks off in the middle of her story. The boy does not even notice until she raps him sharply on the head and clucks at him.

"My lord," she complains and then giggles when he blushes and turns again to her. "I have had the most naughty idea, my lord. Will you list to me?" She bends forward, a curtain of brown curls shielding her face but not Robb Stark's. It turns quite as red as his hair when she finishes and addresses herself to Edmure. "A showing!" she says brightly. "Of the greatest beauties of Orchis and Jasmine."

"I am not sure we are the greatest beauties-" Arianne begins to say. Her uncle Oberyn and his second daughter, Nymeria - none can match them for beauty, for dazzle in Jasmine House. And in Orchis House, Margaery's wit and vivacity is accounted of greater worth than her looks which most are wont to describe as only passably pretty. There are prettier girls, Shae for one, Elinor for another.

"-the most skilled then," Margaery says quickly, "the most desirable."

"I like it," Edmure Tully announces. His nephew looks as though he has been sitting on a porcupine. "Oh come, come, Robb," Edmure clucks, "you're not a babe in swaddling any longer. You're of age and I mean for you to enjoy yourself!"

"My lord father-"

"-is a good man in his own way but never was one less suited for the city." Edmure claps his hand on Robb's shoulder. "You know all you need to of country living, Ned's seen to it. Now I say you put your faith in your uncle just as I put my faith in mine when I was your age. Live a little. Learn to love."

"And to laugh," Margaery murmurs, trailing a finger along his lips. "At the world and at yourself, young lordship." _I'd like to see this one laugh at himself, _Arianne thinks. Margaery tugs at her hand. "But now is the time for lust, I think. Come, come with us."

"A private showing?" Arianne hisses in Margaery's ear as they escort the lordlings to the payment rooms.

"Don't you want it?" Margaery whispers back, not in the least abashed. "I thought they might enjoy it... the trout because it'd take the onus of performing off him and the wolfling because... well, I think he's the kind that likes to sit back and watch like a king."

"And what about me and what I want?" She cannot help the plaintive note that creeps into her voice.

"Oh," Margaery murmurs, slipping an arm around Arianne's waist. Her fingers slide beneath the loose silk and rise to cup her breasts and her already stiffening nipples. Margaery gives one a little tweak and whispers, "I already know what you want, love. Me."

She has not even the will to step back. _A doll, _she thinks, _I am little more than_ _her doll. _"And what do you want, Margaery?"

"To laugh." Her brown eyes, almond-shaped and fringed with thick dark lashes like a doe's, sparkle. "To spread joy."

_To profit, _Arianne thinks, noting the way her friend's eyes dart to Robb Stark. Assessing, measuring, reflecting.


End file.
